Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream

I’ve talked a few times about how most of my ice cream experiences growing up were largely a product of the local soft serve stand. The thing is, soft serve isn’t exactly ice cream. That, combined with the fact that my mom kept ice cream out of the house the majority of the time, meant that I was a bit older before I started discovering all of the different flavor possibilities associated with “real” ice cream, not just the vanilla, chocolate or swirls of soft serve. I remember going to the beach with my family when I was around 14 years old; on more than one occasion we’d walk down to the ice cream shop near where we were staying. I fell in love. Chocolate chip cookie dough… in ice cream?! It was a dream come true. My mom may not have kept the freezer stocked with ice cream, but she did allow us to lick the beaters. Cookie dough was some amazing stuff, and there it was… floating in rich, creamy vanilla ice cream. My teenage mind was blown.

Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream is my go-to if nothing else at the ice cream shop sounds particularly interesting. I’m rarely disappointed. That being said, there has been the occasional cone that seems particularly lacking in the cookie dough department. That will never, ever be a problem with homemade cookie dough ice cream. You have my word.

Last summer, I made chocolate-chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream at the request of my Chief Culinary Consultant, but I couldn’t go very long without churning out a vanilla version. For as much as I love chocolate, I’ve always been a vanilla-first ice cream kind of girl. I made this ice cream using an adaptation of my favorite vanilla ice cream and absolutely loaded it with chunks of (eggless!) chocolate chip cookie dough.

I have years of ice cream eating to catch up on, so I’ll be hovering near the freezer with a spoon while you churn up this recipe!

Directions:

Prepare the Ice Cream Base: Warm the milk, sugar, 1 cup of the heavy cream and the salt in a medium saucepan over low heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved, then increase the heat to medium. Pour the remaining 1 cup heavy cream into a large bowl and place a fine-mesh sieve on top. Whisk the egg yolks in a medium bowl. Once the milk mixture begins to simmer around the edges, slowly pour it into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Scrape the mixture back into the saucepan.

Place the saucepan over medium heat and stir constantly with a rubber spatula, being sure to scrape the bottom of the pan as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the back of the spatula, a few minutes. The mixture should register 170 to 175 degrees F on an instant-read digital thermometer.

Pour the custard through the fine-mesh sieve and stir it into the cream. Stir in the vanilla extract, and place the bowl over an ice bath. Stir occasionally, until the mixture is cool. Cover and transfer the custard to the refrigerator until completely chilled, at least 8 hours or overnight.

Prepare the Cookie Dough: Combine the butter and both sugars in a mixing bowl and beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the cream, vanilla and salt, and mix for another minute or so, until combined. Scrape the sides of the bowl, then reduce the mixer speed to low and gradually add the flour, mixing just until incorporated. Using a rubber spatula, stir in the chocolate chips. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to 2 days.

Churn the Ice Cream: Just before churning the ice cream, scoop the cookie dough into ½-teaspoon to 1 teaspoon-sized balls and place on a plate or parchment-lined baking sheet and place in the freezer. Churn the ice cream according to the manufacturer's instructions. When finished churning, fold in the chunks of cookie dough and transfer to an airtight container. Freeze until firm, at least 4 hours.

My sister-in-law made this and it was AMAZING. But I can’t handle much sugar, so I’m making it today with 75% less sugar. I’m not replacing the sugar I left out, either; going without sugar for a while trains your taste buds to not want lots and lots of sweetness. I haven’t finished it yet, but just licking the custard bowl gave me a lot of hope :D I love it and so does my 8-year-old sugar-addicted son! Leaving out 3/4ths of the sugar from the cookie dough may have been a bit extreme; next time I’ll try only decreasing the cookie-dough sugar by half instead of 75%. But it is still delicious, and my kids licked the cookie-dough bowl with much satisfaction!

Also, for the leftover egg whites, I plan on making a pavlova, an egg-white and sugar baked dessert. Egg-white omelets just don’t sound appetizing to me :P

Anyway, thanks for posting this awesome recipe! I haven’t made ice cream in years because I was afraid to try making custard, and I wasn’t happy with the “just throw the cream and sugar in the ice-cream maker” recipes. My kids will be thrilled that I have a new dessert I can make :D

Hi Michelle, I just tried this out. Im a beginner so sorry if I have some basic (stupid) questions: 1. A rubber spatula is mentioned twice, I dont have one, is it that important? 2. My custard never got thick, after more than 10min cooking it started to form small clots but the mixture was still too fluid, so I decided to take it off and move on. What did I do wrong? 3. What do you mean by “churn to manufacturers instructions”? 4. The custard came out of the fridge frozen (obviously:) so it was quite hard to churn, had to let it melt a bit, is this normal/recommended? 5. I have done some other icecream and in all of them the heavy cream had to be whipped together with sugar. Here the cream never got whipped so I could still taste the original ‘raw’ cream in the final outcome, which by the way was not great :) but I will try again! Thanks, and congratulations on being one of the top results when googling cookie icecream!

Hi Remigio, Here are the answers: 1. You should be using something flexible to scrape the sides and bottom of the pot when making the custard. You could also use a wooden spoon, but I find a spatula to do a better job. 2. The mixture will still be fluid; it will not turn into a pudding consistency, but it should thicken (use the “coat the back of a spatula/spoon” test). Using a digital thermometer is the best way to ensure it’s cooked properly. 3. Each ice cream maker comes with a specific set of instructions about how to churn ice cream in their particular machine. You should refer to these instructions when it comes time to churning the ice cream. 4. No, this is not normal. I don’t understand how the custard would freeze in the refrigerator. Did you put it in the freezer? If placed in the refrigerator (most are kept somewhere around 34-40 degrees F), it should just be chilled, but still a pourable liquid.

Hi, thanks for taking the time. It helps. 1/2. Looks like I have to go for some shopping, spatula and thermometer :) 3. I had never heard of the ice cream maker, looked it up and know now. As I said Im a beginner. Im wondering of one such exists around here in Mozambique. The other ice cream I made whipping and folding manually and until now it was going fine, but htis recipe is a bit more complex :) 4. Yes freezer instead of refrigerator, my bad. Well, will try again!

I’m in the process of making the recipe and it’s looking good so far, haven’t put it in the ice cream maker yet. But for some reason my custard was too thick to go through the sieve. Had to just pour it in. Did I cook it too long?

Hi Drew, You had to have cooked it quite a long time if it did not go through the sieve at all. Typically, the custard will pour right through but the sieve will catch little pieces of egg. Even pastry cream, which is traditionally thick, can go through sieve, albeit by using a spoon or spatula to stir and coax it through.

I overcooked my custard a wee bit, and it didn’t want to just pour through my sieve either. I helped it along by scraping the inside of the sieve with a spoon or rubber spatula, kind of pushing the custard through. It came out just fine :D

The chocolate chip cookies were a great match for the stash of vanilla ice cream we had on hand. It is really a nice and helpful piece of information. I’m happy that you shared this useful info with us.

Okay, I got lazy and didn’t make the cookie dough (use chopped Joe Joe’s instead), but the base recipe was fabulous! This was the best ice cream I’ve ever made. And I’d highly recommend combining it with Joe Joe’s or Oreos as a short cut, though I will try the cookie dough eventually.

Oh my goodness…so glad you posted this. I actually made my own version using your Philadelphia style vanilla ice cream recipe and your eggless cookie dough recipe from the chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough. It was so good! But now I’m going to have to try this one! Can’t wait!